Portraits of a Few of the People I've Made Cry: Stories Kindle Edition

I do not often read short stories. But after reading her novel, Little Known Facts, I wanted to read more by Christene Sneed. I enjoyed almost all the stories and many really had an impact on me.

I came across Sneed because one of her stories was in Best American Short Stories. Her writing is gorgeous, and all the stories in this collection are fabulous.

Christine Sneed is a true original. Each of the stories in this collection hooked me in the first paragraph and never let go. In many collections all the stories seem to have a similar voice, but the opposite is true here: each is its own different world, inhabited by its own distinctive characters in compelling situations. A beautiful book by a beautiful writer.

I must admit that I've never been a big reader of short fiction. It's not that I'm not interested in the genre, and it's not that I don't cherish a really beautifully executed short story. I think it's just that outside of reading them for college classes, I don't seek out short stories. Like most readers these days, I'm drawn to the longer narrative, the familiarity of the same characters painted on page after page of a long story. Perhaps it's laziness, but I enjoy not having to reimagine a new world, characters, and situation every ten or twenty pages. It's easier to continue lingering in a world of the familiar with the novel.How much Christine Sneed's book has changed my opinion of what a short story collection can accomplish. This book was so engrossing, so easily addicting, that I found myself very quickly slipping into the world of each of the new characters. This book made me nearly miss my train stop one morning. Sneed's characters speak so uniquely and confessionally that they easily take form and start leading the reader into their worlds. Within one or two pages of each new story I found myself quickly acclimating to the new climate of the story and feeling the tug of believable, human, and understandable tension. While all of the voices in "Portraits" are female, I was so astounded at how different they each were--young, menopausal, insecure, frustrated, hopeful to a fault--and how relatable. I'm in my late twenties, trying to find a career path, new to love and relationships, and I found it so interesting that I felt such a connection to the protagonist in the story, "By the Way." Even though she's in her late fifties, divorced, close to wrapping up her career as a dance teacher, this woman's voice reached out deeply into my own experience. I could understand her fears, her insecurities, her hopes, as if they were my own. I was astounded that Sneed could create character after character that could speak so honestly about the human experience, and yet each character was so remarkably different and believably drawn.I will turn to this book again and again not just because it is a joy to read, but because it will serve as an excellent example for my own writing.And Just as I think it's perhaps a bit lazier to read a novel, I imagine that it might be a bit easier to write one. Only once does the author conceive the main characters and begin to build the world of conflict around them. Again and again in the short story collection the writer is asked to find a voice for their players, and set them in a new and interesting situation. And several times the author must swiftly and deftly dig her character's out of the mess she's sunk them in. Sneed does this so poetically and effortlessly she has truly given me a new appreciation for the short story. And she's written a collection that speaks of larger themes of love, helplessness, and resurrection that bind the stories together in that satisfying feel of a novel. I already can't wait for her next collection.

The title is deceptive. Theses stories are not about people anyone made cry. A secondary character in one story has given that title to some ink sketches.Some of these stories are first person, others third person narrowly following the protagonist. The stories are set in contemporary America, but vary in social milieu from sophisticated upper bohemians to working class uneducated. The protagonist in many is a thoughtful, somewhat rueful woman dealing intelligently with winding her way among career and romantic issues. Sneed pays attention to the erotic, and many of the stories are sexy, without usually being very explicit. Many of them involve couples where one partner is notably older than the other, usually, but not always, the man (all couples are heterosexual). Several involve the effect of the prospect of glamour, or the effect of a glamorous person on the lives of people around him/her, but here is nothing trivial about these stories.What I like most about the stories is the rich reality of the characters. No caricatures like Dickens or stereotypes like T. C Boyle; these folks, even many secondary characters, walk right off the page and inhabit your mind. The stories are not slices of life; you get a sense of the whole life of the main characters, really quite an achievement and the short form. The prose is clean; it does its job well without calling attention to itself, but can rise to moving occasions. The plots are thoughtfully constructed and are notable for reflecting the character of the protagonist. You come away both with the feeling you have learned a little about how people navigate life (or fail to), and that you have more questions. Detailed descriptions of settings from time to time add to the depth of texture - not exactly in style of Balzac, but in his tradition.The series are not experimental; this is mainstream fiction. However in one story, my favorite, the narrator describes a series of interviews between her and some one who is researching the life of her glamorous late husband. Her account illuminates: her relation with her husband, with the interviewer, with her whole past, and with erotic involvement very reflectively and ingeniously.

The compilation of short stories are interesting and touching; great depiction of human emotions.

This book was a gift from a friend who read about it in the Chicago Tribune and liked it, too. It's easy to see why. The stories are readable, colorful, captivating and insightful. You are immediately drawn into them and want to know what's going to happen next. It's interesting to see how a writer such as Ms. Sneed creates her own "portraits" with words, instead of pigments. Her language is poetic, though I had to reach for the dictionary a few times. I agree with the Tribune's literary critic Julia Keller, that the author is a very gifted writer. This book fit into my purse, which made it easy to take to appointments and on the train, as once I began to read it, I didn't want to put it down.